


jabs and feints and forfeits

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Multi, and an ABSENCE OF UNHEALTHY POWER DYNAMICS, ohoho we got banter lads, we got (non-overbearing) references to classic who, we got some CHARGED MENTAL TELEPATHY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 02:54:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22425037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: "You know, everyone is born with it. Love, love in them, love around them, spilled out—” Her step grows bouncier in spite of herself, “In ribbons and streams—purple, green, and brilliant yellow—tumbling over itself in its haste to be shared—” She searches for a metaphor, “—Like water."
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master, Thirteenth Doctor & The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 95





	jabs and feints and forfeits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [babybel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybel/gifts).



Abruptly, she opens the mind-link into the Master’s dream.

She’s done this before. A long time ago, lying prone in the sparse, standard-issue Academy cot, before she was the Doctor, before she was anyone, really—no talking after lights-out, but this was her cheatcode, her hideaway, the metaphorical treehouse of a restricted and repressed but maniacally creative kid. She and her best friend, her first friend, retreated (as depressed people do) into their minds. But not into their own minds; into each others’. In that way, for a while, they were safe.

_One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. Contact._

Four taps, four knocks, four beats of her heart, and she’s there, in the half-light, in the emptiness, standing in front of the Master.

He’s wearing a suit, some discordant mismatch of purple. He’s pacing, hissing something half in Gallifreyan to himself, but he stops short when he sees her.

“Reminiscing?” he asks, unsurprised.

“No,” she lies fluidly.

“Questions about the Timeless Child?”

“Wrong again.”

“I suppose you came to preach, then.”

She refuses to be baited. “A little.”

The Master eyes her like a caged thing, his voice dark. “Go on.”

“Would you like a chair?” The Doctor waves a hand and conjures two, and sets them so they face each other. It’s less for comfort and more for a show of power; by exerting control over the Master’s own dreamscape, she is robbing him of not only his title but his sanctuary.

And the Master, who is the only person in the universe to understand this as intrinsically as the Doctor does, glares at her and pointedly changes the upholstery of his chair from a blue to a bloody burgundy. The Doctor, with only a split-second of focus, changes it back.

The Master looks at her grudgingly, then appraisingly, then grudgingly again.

“Will you sit?” the Doctor asks.

He sits.

For a while, there’s uneasy quiet between them. The only leverage the Master has over the Doctor is his knowledge of the Timeless Child. If she’s not curious about that, he has nothing. 

They both know it.

They both know each other so well.

Minutes pass. The Master finally breaks the silence. 

“Why haven’t you just killed me,” he half-snarls.

“Because I loved you,” the Doctor says easily. “Honestly, I think I did. There’s this one sliver of you that still—there’s this piece of you—” she flexes her hands and tries to explain it. “There’s this part of you that’s still who you once were. I see this glint in your eyes sometimes. It isn’t real; I know it isn’t real; I just _see_ it. But I reach for it just the same.”

The Master snorts. “Bit stupid.”

“Bit hopeful,” the Doctor corrects.

Silence falls between them again.

“Loved,” the Master says finally, struggling for impassivity. “Past tense.”

“Glad ya noticed.” The Doctor stands, deletes her chair, and begins to walk in a circle around him. “You know, everyone is born with it. _Love_ , love _in_ them, love _around_ them, spilled out—” Her step grows bouncier in spite of herself, “In ribbons and streams—purple, green, and _brilliant_ yellow—tumbling over itself in its haste to be shared—” She searches for a metaphor, “—Like water. No, not like water—like love, because nothing else is like love except love. It’s prodigal, it’s prodigious, it’s produced by the simple act of _living_ ,” her voice turns harsh, “And you never understood that.”

The Master raises an eyebrow, unimpressed.

“I loved you as Missy,” the Doctor says. “I loved you as the one before that, too.” She scrunches her face in an odd moment of self-reflection. “Shouldn’t’a. But anyway, I loved you. Yes, past tense.”

“Why?”

“Everyone is born with it,” she repeats. “The urge to be warm, to be held, to be cradled—”

“Coddled,” the Master suggests.

“ _Cuddled_ ,” the Doctor allows. “Even you. Even you have that. Probably.”

“Then why,” the Master spreads his hands sarcastically, “Do you not adore me still?”

“Because,” the Doctor shrugs again, with an odd little smile on her face, “Ya do certain things, and ya forfeit.”

The Master entertains her. “Forfeit?”

“Give it up. Lose it. Lose the right to be loved. Consistent and deliberate cruelty would do it. Torture would do it. Murder would do it. Parading around in that snazzy German uniform of yours would _definitely_ do it.”

“It was a costume,” the Master mutters.

“It was a hell,” the Doctor counters. “Regardless, now? You’re forfeit.” The odd, eerie smile is still on her face. “Any and all affection I had for you, forfeit. You burned it up like you burned Gallifrey. Look at that: you win. Hope you’re pleased with yourself.”

The Master folds his arms. “Burning Gallifrey, you said? Being willing to burn Gallifrey, would that do it, Doctor?” He widens his eyes, forces his voice into a high register, and slathers it with false innocence. “Would that make you ‘forfeit’ love?”

The Doctor’s voice is measured and still. “When I fight, I fight to save. To heal more than I hurt.”

“Heal me, then,” the Master demands.

The Doctor shakes her head. “You lost your chance.”

“I’m past the point of no return?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

That does surprise the Master; he almost snorts. “Are you serious?”

“Be better tomorrow than you were today, and keep on going. That’s all you need to do to be worthy.” She uses her favourite word: “Evolve.”

“Oh really.”

“Oh, absolutely really.” The Doctor smiles tightly. “Really absolutely. That’s something else you’ve never understood, Mister the Master.” She grins on the last three words. “Everyone who tries to _be_ good _deserves_ good. Everyone who tries to _spread_ love _deserves_ love. Everyone. Everyone, everyone, everyone. It’s not about being a vain or arrogant or sentimental, or however else someone like you might perceive it. It’s about loving. Really, it’s about _trying_. It’s about giving a hug or blowing a kiss; it’s about saying ‘Thank you,’ and ‘I missed you,’ and ‘I’m sorry.’ It’s about telling stories, telling jokes, singing songs. It’s jump rope on the pavement, or football in the backyard, or sprinting, laughing, through a sprinkler. Holding someone’s hand and spinning them in circles until you both fall over, giddy.”

“We’ve never had a life like that,” the Master states, derisive.

“But that life is worth protecting.”

“That’s,” the Master points out, in the same tone of voice of that vine, “Your opinion.”

“Well,” says the Doctor, “I’m right.”

“Do you care about me,” the Master asks conversationally, “Or just about the jagged pieces of yourself you happen to find in me?”

“‘For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face,’” the Doctor quotes. “Although a phrase that applies to us slightly better might be ‘Here we go again.’”

“You do,” the Master observes, “Find me again and again.”

“Don’t read too much into it.” And then the Doctor prepares to broach what’s really been on her mind. “Can you tell me one thing?”

The Master crosses his legs. “I don’t know, can I?”

“You in the vault, those years of tears and sniffling.”

The Master looks as though the memory disgusts him. The Doctor, seeing that as weakness, forges on.

“Was it real,” she demands. “Was any of it real? Because it was; I genuinely thought it was.”

“Maybe,” the Master says nastily.

“Were you actually reforming? Did you really try on good before you decided it didn’t fit?”

“Which would hurt you more?” the Master asks. “A yes or a no?”

“Ah.” The Doctor sighs expressively. “Times like this, I miss Jamie. I’m out here talking to you as if you deserve that. He’d have hit you on the head with a Kroton.”

“Jamie?”

“First human I kissed. Funny: sometimes I think I could have seen every star in the universe with you, and I still would have learned nothing.”

That hurts him, that hurts him deeply, she can tell. His weak spot has been found; now she grits her teeth, rolls up her sleeves, and twists the knife in the wound.

“We give meaning to our lives,” she continues. “I find that in my human friends. Vicky, Clara, Tegan, Donna. You never had a Donna. And I do pity you. See,” she gesticulates, “I don’t need to be grandiose. I don’t need to be important. I don’t need to be the Oncoming Storm or or the Time-Lord Victorious or the President of Earth. I just—”

“—Need to be the Doctor,” the Master finishes.

The Doctor nods, satisfied. “Yeah.”

For some reason, that makes the Master happy.

Dangerously happy.

Dangerous.

“Tell me,” he says slowly, as if the thought is just occurring to him. “Have you ever had a human companion who loved you without your title?”

The Doctor is suddenly guarded. “What do you mean?”

“Has anyone ever fallen in love with you without your TARDIS? Without your screwdriver? Without all of time and space at your disposal, the wonders of the universe ready to bloom at the press of a lever? Have any of them loved you without that?”

The Doctor’s voice turns icy. “All of them loved me without that.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am.”

“Try it, Doctor. One time, I think you ought to try it. Run out into the street, no TARDIS, no sonic, no wonders worth a damn, say, ‘Hi, I’m John Smith’ to any random passerby, and see how they react to you. See if they give you that look of admiration, that look of _adoration_ , that you crave.”

“That you _think_ I crave,” the Doctor corrects.

The Master actually laughs. “‘Everyone is born with it,” he mimics. “‘The urge to be warm, to be held, to be cradled.’”

The Doctor pushes her mouth into a slash.

“I didn’t love the Doctor,” the Master says casually. “I loved _you_. And you _enjoyed_ it.”

The Doctor inclines her head.

“I thought you were so bright. So beautiful. So _clever_. You thrived off me,” the Master goes on, “Giving you attention.”

“I’d like to think it was a mutual thing.”

“Thing?” The Master regards her. “You can acknowledge it, you know. You can say, ‘At one stage in my life, I had a romantic relationship with my adversary, an evil mass-murderer known as the Master.' You _can_ say it. Unless, of course, you can’t admit it.”

“At one stage in my life,” the Doctor says, completely deadpan, “I had a romantic relationship with my adversary, an evil mass-murderer known as the Master.”

The Master grins. “You really did love me.”

“I did,” the Doctor admits. “But,” she adds lightly, “As I said. Forfeit.” 

“Forfeit. Unlike the inherently unbalanced relationships you have with your human friends.”

“You only think they're unbalanced relationships because _you_ see them as inferior to me.”

“Yes. Your human friends, your pets.” The Master stands and gets up close to her. “How kind are you really, letting them travel with you? You break them, Doctor. They break when you leave.”

“Nope,” the Doctor says cheerfully, with a gleaming smile. She puts a hand on the side of his face, caresses his cheek, and grins. “ _You_ break when I leave.”

And she leaves.


End file.
